The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean

by Paul Theroux

At the gateway to the Mediterranean lie the two Pillars of Hercules: Gibraltar and Ceuta, in Morocco. Paul Theroux decided to travel from one to the other – but taking the long way round.

His grand tour of the Mediterranean begins in Gibraltar and takes him through Spain, the French Riviera, Italy, Greece, Istanbul and beyond. He travels by any means necessary - including dilapidated taxi, smoke-filled bus, bicycle and even a cruise-liner. And he encounters bullfights, bazaars and British tourists, discovers pockets of humanity in war-torn Slovenia and Croatia, is astounded by the urban developments on the Costa del Sol and marvels at the ancient wonders of Delphi.

Told with Theroux's inimitable wit and style, this lively and eventful tour evokes the essence of Mediterranean life.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Italy, Greece, Africa, Biography, Memoir

523 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Paul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work is The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), a travelogue about a trip he made by train from Great Britain through Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, through South Asia, then South-East Asia, up through East Asia, as far east as Japan, and then back across Russia to his point of origin. Although perhaps best known as a travelogue writer, Theroux has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast.

He is the father of Marcel and Louis Theroux, and the brother of Alexander and Peter. Justin Theroux is his nephew.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why do you bother to read travelogues, Jeff?

1. Between working in the adult film industry and a stint for the Royal Canadian Mounties, I traveled extensively as part of my job in international industrial espionage and it’s always fun to read about places that I only saw at night while wearing a ski mask. Travel tip: A wool ski mask is especially difficult in tropical weather.

2. It’s always nice to get a unique perspective on a time and place. Theroux traveled around the Mediterranean in the mid-90’s when Yugoslavia was tearing itself apart, but before the current crisis in Syria.

3. Travel humor is the best. Bill Bryson’s jabs are usually as subtle as using an anvil to crack a walnut; whereas, Theroux deftly uses his dry wit like a switchblade in an alley flight.

4. I like to learn about stuff. You’re never too old to handle a well-lubed metric ton of info-dump. Theroux traveled from one pillar of Hercules all the way around to the other, mixing history, literary illusions, random observation, and his extensive knowledge of porn to make this one of his better travel books.

5. Not being much of an asshole, it’s nice to vicariously live via someone else’s assholery. Theroux was especially astute in his ability to “harass’ the locals. In Syria then under dictator, Hafez al-Assad, this was especially wince-inducing. For Bryson, there’s never a target too small or big for his juvenile brand of humor.

6. “It’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there” can be modified to “It’s a piss hole of a place and I will never set foot there in my lifetime.” Theroux finds the wonderful and equally dreadful things everywhere, sometimes in the same locale.

7. Books are designed to take you elsewhere, why not transport you to an actual journey through the eyes of a skilled and gifted writer.

[Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Theroux is not a nice man. It isn’t nice to say that Albanians look “retarded”. It isn’t nice to point out that Greece is a welfare case sponging off the EU and milking a cultural legacy it has dishonored with its parochialism. And it certainly isn’t nice—it is, in fact, downright impolitic and a bit sinister—to take such obvious pleasure in despising Israelis.

But nice people, as a rule, don’t write great travel books. They write "heartwarming tales" full of spiritual uplift and multicultural group hugs. Niceness—complacent, undiscriminating niceness—is basically sluttish. It smiles at stupidity and winks at injustice and consults its own comfort.

I don’t know if The Pillars of Hercules is a great travel book, but it’s definitely an interesting one, and that’s saying something, because the Mediterranean is the most overdone body of water in literature. Theroux may be a hater, but he’s what Hazlitt used to call a "good hater": his hatred generously makes room for all kinds of odd passions and sudden sympathies.

If you really must travel—and personally I think more people should stay home and watch CSI—Theroux’s example is as good as any.

[Bob Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melancholy Banalities Galore

OK, I admit it. I swore off reading any more of Paul Theroux’s books a few years ago because I was tired of the negativity, the tired gaze at the crappiness of the world. I would never say you can’t find the trash of life. Hey, it’s everywhere, all around us, even if you live in a fairly nice town, as I do. But if you want, you could make a list of all the shortcomings, the purposely mean or the unconsciously-created ugly things here too. Sometimes I see trash floating by the beach, people put up McMansions, and kids do cover rocks with dumb graffiti (are there intelligent graffiti?). Where are all the sea creatures I knew as a kid? I can point the finger at all the folks who sprayed endless amounts of herbicide and pesticide on their “beautiful green lawns”—poison which washed out to sea and killed nearly everything. It's an atrocity. But I had this book about a wandering around the Mediterranean and I thought, after years, “Well, I could give him another shot.” I’m more or less glad I did. I would say this is a 3.5 book, but the writing is smooth and Theroux seemed to have gained a sense of humor that he lost after a case of too much Naipaul. Also, I believe he was in love. That always helps. So, I gave it four stars.

Theroux travels because he likes that life, because “it” is there, whatever “it” is. Mainly his travels involve meeting people, at least those who speak the languages he knows. He doesn’t like tourists, but of course he is just another tourist in the eyes of others. He just considers himself special. He asks a lot of questions. Some people like that, some don’t. He decided to wander around the Mediterranean Sea from Gibraltar, along the coastline all the way round to Ceuta or Tangier, opposite Gibraltar on the North African shore. At first the going is easy. He passes through Spain, France, Corsica, Sicily, and Italy, around to Croatia, where the last stages of the Yugoslav wars are going on. He can’t get into Montenegro, still federated with Serbia, but manages to arrive in Albania. Then, there’s a break back in the USA, followed by a luxury cruise which takes him to Istanbul. It’s good to be a famous writer—free champagne, two salmon terrine with caviar and tomato. He takes a budget Turkish cruise to northern Cyprus, Egypt, and Israel. Back to earth, he takes the all-night bus from Istanbul to Iskenderun and crosses into Syria. Lebanon is too dangerous. From Syria he enters Jordan and Israel again. Visiting Greek Cyprus, he then goes to Greece, Malta and Tunisia. Finally, because Libya and Algeria are closed to tourists, he takes a great detour, goes back to Spain and arrives in Morocco, where Tangier is his last destination. You will read of his impressions of all these spots on the coasts of the blue sea, his still-extant disdain for other tourists and the crappy architecture of many tourist resorts (I agree). But this time, our author actually met some people he liked even though he refers to their stories as “melancholy banalities”. He managed to like a few places. Love will do that.

If you are looking for travel tips or any sort of history, political snapshots or cultural style of these places, forget it. This is about “me and my trip” with some interesting or humorous encounters.

[Oceana2602 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Theroux amuses me.

I know that not everyone likes his sarcasm and that he is seemingly never content with where he is (but then, which great traveler is ever contempt with where he is? Isn't that why we travel?). I find him intelligent and entertaining, and because I don't always agree with him, he makes me look at the world in a new and interesting ways. That he managed to do that when he wrote about Europe, my home, shows even more what a great writer he is.

The Pillars of Hercules is everything you could want from a Theroux book. Personally, I liked "The happy Isles of Oceania" better, but intellectually this is his best book so far. I hope his new one is released soon.

[Jenny Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm about 1/3 the way through and yes, he is one cranky old man and annoyingly full of himself. This isn't anything new, but in the past he was also a very good travel writer. This, alas, is no longer true.

In this book he's become lazy. He goes from place to place getting on one boat or train after another and interacting only with the people he randomly encounters: the proprietor of the he hotel, others waiting for transport, the lunatics who accost strangers in public places.

It's as if he's gone "work to rule" on filling this book contract. He's signed a contract to write a book where he goes to all these places he's damned if he's going to do anything more than he has to when he gets there.

For example, he goes to Robert Graves' home on Mallorca but tells the reader almost nothing about Graves, who was one of the more interesting authors of the 20th century. What he does say about Graves is so telegraphic you'd have to know a lot about Graves before reading it to understand it. (He throws off a one liner, for example, about how Graves threw out his lover and found another White Goddess.) Theroux doesn't bother to meet with Graves' children who were living in the house when he visited, either. It would be one thing if this was because they had rejected a request to meet him, but he admits he didn't even bother to contact them. Lazy.

Note: I did finish it and it got worse. Once out of Western Europe Theroux sees what he expects to see, applying racial and national stereotypes to everyone he meets based on a phrase or two he overhears or elicits. His antisemitism is pervasive and unpleasant, and very familiar to anyone who lives in Massachusetts and knows people raised in the class he grew up in.

What is the most wearing--and revealing about the author in this book--is the way he continuously excoriates the other foreigners he meets for being tourists while flattering himself that he is a "traveler." Not once or twice but every few pages. The world, to Theroux, is infested with people who travel the same places he goes and enjoy them. A lot of them turn out to be Germans who he loathes for reasons he considers so self-evident he doesn't share them with the reader. Indeed, as far as I've read (he's just left Croatia) he's never actually brought any Germans to life with his pen, but dozens of times he's used the term "German" in the same kind of tone most travelers save for bedbugs.

In short, the once perceptive Theroux has become lazy, and traveling has become a distasteful pursuit he must follow to earn the very comfortable living that lets him spend the rest of his time in Hawaii basking in his fame.

[Inês França · Rating 3 out of 5]

At his best, Theroux is a lovable grump, at his worst a poster person for #whitepeoplesproblems.
At a certain point, reading this book became an ordeal. Can someone edit this man, please?
And by the way the "portuguese" saying he quotes near the end? "Quando con Levante chiove, las pedras muove" isn't portuguese and rather a strange combination of spanish and italian (funny he wouldn't notice, since he keeps pointing out how fluent he is in italian), which made me doubt every single turkish sentence written.
For all his talk of wanting see "real places" and "real people" he really comes into his own surrounded by wealthy excentrics in a luxurious cruise. Theroux, don't fight it, dude. You're just a white, waspish, snobbish man. Just embrace it. Let me hear those cruise menus again.

[Rex Fuller]

Reminded myself why I swore off of Theroux’s travel books years ago. Although I finished this one, like the others, it was not so much travel as a report on the four inches between his ears while going to the ports of the Mediterranean. Hoped to get a kind of update on many of the same places I had been–especially in Turkey–and was disappointed to get Theroux’s egotistical and misanthropic attitude towards everything. My recommendation: avoid his travel books (there are vastly more palatable travel writers) and stick to his fiction, which isn’t as larded with him.

[James Hartley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Theroux. I like his grouchy old man act and I like the books (not a fan of the novels, though). This one is entertaining and informative and well-written. It´s also another example of a book written not so long ago at all but which, thanks to the Internet gap, seems to be from another world - the author making phone calls to Honolulu in bars and being amazed at this, for example.

[Jessaka · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I love some of his other books this book was a hard read. He rushed through these countries and towns so fast, that I didn't feel that I learned anything other than bits of history.

[Missy J · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my fourth Paul Theroux travel book and the first one I am giving 3 stars. I had high expectations and it fell somewhat flat. Some parts I enjoyed reading, but others were really boring. Paul wasn't even sure if he wanted to write this book. In his previous travel books, I enjoyed his journeys through the Polynesian islands, taking the railway from Boston across Latin America all the way down to Patagonia and his train journeys through China. This time he travels along the Mediterranean coast (skipping Lebanon, Libya and Algeria), a region which he said he had never set foot on, but read a lot about.

His journey begins in Gibraltar and he travels along the coast of Spain and France to Mallorca, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily. Then he continues along the coast of Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. In the eastern Mediterranean, his trip becomes a bit more chaotic and he often has to trace his way back to Italy in order to reach other places. The Yugoslavian War is waging during that time (early nineties) and there are some places in the Arab world, he was advised not to visit. He talks a lot about the books he read of the country he has visited. He meets some incredible authors like Naguib Mahfouz in Egypt and Paul Bowles in Morocco. I was shocked to read that in the nineties many beaches of the Mediterranean were already littered, I don't know if that is still the case or if there has been any improvement. His favorite countries were Syria, Tunisia and of course Italy because of the food. He is quite lucky to have seen Syria before the Syrian War. It made me sad thinking of how much the war with ISIS has destroyed very important historical places in Syria. We really lost a lot there. I got the feeling that he didn't like the touristy aspects of the Mediterranean, which is why he was critical of the real estate boom in Spain and Greece. He also doesn't like welfare states. He likes the less developed parts of the Mediterranean and avoided sightseeing, which sometimes was impossible. I remember when I read his book journey in Polynesia and in China, Paul was sort of restless, critical and very witty. This time around, he has calmed down and is somewhat boring, especially in Italy. Maybe because he speaks Italian fluently, the unexpected didn't hit him. Or maybe it's because he blends in very well in Mediterranean society, most people ignored him and nothing interesting happened. Luckily, the story picked up again when he took a luxury cruise ship across the Mediterranean and then a Turkish cruise ship where he was the only foreigner on board. That showed me his interesting side again and how he adapts and talks to people. The people on both ships were such contrasts to each other. It is really the people who make the novel for Paul. Remembering the Moroccan Jewish taxi driver in Haifa who complained about the Arabs, but when he tagged along with Paul to visit an Arab Christian writer, he was so touched by their hospitality and words. I was also touched by the old woman in Croatia who was living in war but didn't want to take Paul's money for the coffee he had in her restaurant, because they had a good conversation about life ("I had to travel here to find a token of generosity, from a skinny woman in a cafe, in a town full of shell holes, in the shadow of a war. Perhaps war was the reason. not everyone was brutalized; war made some people better.").

Some other quotes from the book that I liked:

[on what he looks for in books]"Originality, humor, subtlety. The writing itself. A sense of place. A new way of seeing. Lots of things. I like to believe the things I read."

"'Look, we are Croats, but last year my father was robbed of almost five thousand U.S. dollars in dinars, and the robber was a Croat!' He laughed. He was busily eating spaghetti. "Serbs are Protestants, Croats are Catholics, Bosnians are Mussulmens. Me, I can't understand Slovene or Montenegrin or Macedonian. It is like French to me. Bosnian and Serbian and Croat language are almost the same. But we don't speak to each other anymore!'"

"That was the strange thing about a tourist resort without tourists. The town had been adapted for people who were not there. The hotels looked haunted, the restaurants and shops were empty, the beaches were neglected as a result and were littered and dirty. Few of the shops sold anything that a native or a townie would be likely to need or could afford. So the place was inhabited by real people, but everything else about it seemed unreal."

"After that, whenever I read about troop maneuvers or politicians grandstanding or mortar attack on cities or the pettiness and terror of the war, I thought about this skinny man and wife, each one holding a bag, pushing their little boy down the quay at Split, their starved faces turned to the Mediterranean, waiting for the ferry to take them away from here."

"'Are you a religious person?'
'No. I have no religion,' he said. 'Religion is false. Christian, Muslim, Jewish - all false.'
'Why do you think that?'
'Because they cause trouble.'
'Don't they bring peace and understanding, too?'
'People should be friends. I think it is easier to be friends without religion,' he said. 'You can have peace without religion. Peace is easier, too, without religion.'"

[John Purcell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slightly masochistic to being reading a travel book during Lockdown Two, The Inevitable Return. But though painful, I feel a bit better for doing so. Paul Theroux travels in such an accidental manner, going here or there on a whim, talking to strangers, taking risks, preferring the uncomfortable to the familiar that The Pillars of Hercules is less a guide to the Mediterranean and more a gentle encouragement to break out of our bubbles so that we might see this world and its people as they are.

[Jeremy Forstadt · Rating 5 out of 5]

In THE PILLARS OF HERCULES, Paul Theroux travels a well-trodden path, for once, and one which has perhaps been excessively romanticized in the past. In contrast to many of the other regions of the world in which he has traveled and of which he has written, the Mediterranean has a long literary history consisting of native writers and expatriates alike. In much of this book, Theroux manages to skirt the most touristed regions of Mediterranea while seeking out the landmarks and icons (some living) of the literary Mediterranean. In some ways, THE PILLARS OF HERCULES is substantially different than any other travelogue published by Theroux.

In other ways, however, this book remains true to the Theroux we have always loved or reviled. How could it not be? Theroux's acerbic pen has not lost its bite, and his misanthropic self is as prominent a character in this book as it is in all his others. Now, however, he is treading a sacred path: one which, for once, may have been crossed by a substantial number of his readers.

Beginning in Gibraltar, Theroux's plan is to circumnavigate the Mediterranean while remaining as close to the water's edge as possible. The plan to stay within sight of the water sometimes causes Theroux (or perhaps it provides the excuse he needs) to miss some of the more popular locations of the Grand Tour, yet it keeps him close to those who make their livelihoods at the shores of the great sea. In one of the most traveled regions on earth, Theroux manages to find those out of the way places--not gems perhaps, but surprisingly untouched by the tourist trade--where we can really experience a sense of place and of culture.

THE PILLARS OF HERCULES ends up being a deeply satisfying work for those who love to travel in a vagabond manner, though perhaps not for those whose travels consist of packaged tours and managed activity schedules (and perhaps not as well for those possessed of eternally sunny dispositions). Whatever your travel preference, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone pondering a Mediterranean vacation. There is bound to be something interesting or entertaining here for anyone.

[Jon Stout · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having enjoyed several of Paul Theroux's books, especially Sir Vidia's Shadow, I thought a tour of the Mediterranean would be great. I like Theroux's rough and ready (former Peace Corps) style of travel, except occasionally when he goes luxury class.

Starting from Gibraltar, Theroux has to zigzag in order to cover the islands and to avoid political conflict. I was surprised to remember how much violent discord there is in the Mediterranean. He zigzags in the former Yugoslavia, unable to transit Montenegro, and he also has to avoid Lebanon, Libya and Algeria.

I like Theroux's habit of reading and reviewing the literature of whatever place he is visiting, and he seeks out authors whenever he can. In Egypt he searches out Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, and is awed by his brave, fatalistic attitude toward having been attacked by an extremist.

Even though the Turks are always smoking and the service is wretched, Theroux warms to their courteous and personable ways. He seems at his best travelling by bus from Turkey through Syria and Jordan, appreciating the almost Biblical village life along the way. In Israel he visits an Israeli Christian Arab writer, Emile Habiby, and is again inspired by a positive view of the future.

He finishes in Tangier, Morocco, visiting the aging author Paul Bowles. Theroux has his likes (Turks and Italians) and his dislikes
(dictators and security officials and tourist hucksters), but he is always prodding and questioning and interesting.

[Michelle Warwick · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'll confess from the start that a travel memoir is just not my kind of thing and so I probably started reading this book rather resentfully.

I just so desperately wanted to be proved wrong. Sadly I was not.

This book delved into the dull minutiae of his trip to the extent that I was simply bored by it. The book contained sweeping generalisations about the countries, cultures and people he encountered on his travels and there were no great insights that I could glean.

I suppose now is the time that I admit I only got half way through before getting so annoyed with the man that I threw the book across the room and declared I could not possibly take any more.

This is just not for me.

[Shovelmonkey1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another excellent travel book and unusual in its approach as he circumnavigates the Mediterranean, never straying from the coastal route, examining the cultural similarities and differences between all the countries who share one common border - the Middle Sea. The book is very well written, amusing and insightful. Theroux also thoughtfully introduces us to a hefty reading list as he quotes at length from other travel books which have already dealt with each country. A must for any arm chair traveller and a capsule guide to the Med with a handy reading list combined.

[zunggg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Theroux's travel writing because he's more interested in people than in landscapes and monuments. Travel and our experience of the world are mediated through people and their stories, yet so many travel writers seem averse to the kind of real-life chat roulette that can only be had by travelers or barflies. If Theroux is a misanthropist — which I think he is, and usually in an entertaining way — then it's surely a consequence of his having spoken to his fellow man all over the planet and found him, on the whole, a bit of a pain in the ass. This seems to me a defensible attitude, much more so than that of the Baedeker-style traveler (Chatwin for example) who prides himself on an open mind but seldom looks up from his notepad. He's a "traveler as an agent of provocation" as he says in his somewhat self-aggrandizing way.

Theroux chose the perfect moment for his lap of the Med. It's 1994, after the Maastricht treaty but before the introduction of the Euro; before smartphones and the Internet made travel easier and solo travel less lonely (and reduced the opportunities to strike up a conversation); the former Yugoslavia is mid-conflagration; Cyprus is still divided; Albania is in the throes of post-Communist anarchy; cheap flights haven't quite supplanted the far more conversation-provoking trains and ferries as the main way for people to get around. More than half the countries he visits are experiencing some form of war, anarchy or dictatorship; Spain and Greece have only relatively recently emerged from the latter state. The more interesting chapters, as you'd expect, are set in these states — Theroux doesn't find much worth saying about the French Riviera. But his writing isn't reliant on chaos or privation, as he demonstrates with an eloquent book-within-the-book, his account of a luxury cruise to Istanbul.

By this point in his career he's well aware of his reputation for egotism and curmudgeonliness, and plays up to it from time to time, like when seeing his books on sale in Barcelona gives the city "an air of sympathy and erudition and [...] made me want to stay a while." But the truth is he's always curious, and whether it's his personal notes on Dalí or his analysis of Spanish pornography or his relish in the demonyms Lesbian, Damascene, Tangerine, he's trying to get at the essence of the people and places he encounters. But it's always the dialogues I look forward to, like the exchange with five young Syrian men in Aleppo (then under the dictatorial rule of Bashar's dad), two of whom tell him they're gay:

"But didn't you say you were married?"
"Yes. I just found out I am a homosexual one month ago, after five years of married life."
"Isn't that a little inconvenient?" I asked.
"Only for my wife," Akkad said.

[Ruby Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a really great book that I could barely put down. It provided a viewpoint of the Mediterranean that lacks judgement but is not without opinion, borders humorous and satirical when called for and doesn't gloss over what is beautiful while staring in the face what is ugly. 4/5 stars.

The first part of this book was hard going but I think it was a case of the wrong book at the wrong time as I have picked this up nearly a year later and really enjoyed it. I have read this right off the back of The Old Patagonian Express and I think I enjoyed it a little more. There were subtle differences in Theroux's writing that made it a more enjoyable read, perhaps due to the subject matter or the author himself (this book being written 15 years later).

Parts that I particularly enjoyed included:
- When Theroux travelled through countries under current or recent dictatorial rule. The stories from these people and places were eye opening and although are now 20 years in the past are surely still important voices in social and literary discourse.
- Travels by boat. I know that a key characteristic of Theroux's travel novels is his insistence of travelling via train. I found in interesting though that there was a variety of travel modes and loved hearing about the characters he encountered on each of the "cruises" he went on.
- The different authors and people of note that he seeks out were very eccentric and engaging.
- The political discourse was as interesting as ever and the amount of historical references were just enough to be interesting but not so little as to be tokenistic.

[Ricardo Ribeiro · Rating 2 out of 5]

What I like in this book and this author: the writing and traveling style, the areas chosen for his wanders. What I don't like: everything else. I don't like his arrogant ways - it's not nice from the author to call someone judgmental when he is a great example of a judgmental person. Then we have the sheer ignorance. I have news for Paul Theroux - to mention just a couple examples from the top of my memory: Mostar is in Herzegovina, NOT in Bosnia. It was the Croats NOT the Serbs who bombed the old bridge of Mostar.

Then it's truly puzzling is management of the book's space. As we know, the author decided to travel around the Mediterranean and write a book about it. It's difficult to understand that about 70% of the book is about the European shores of the sea. It's difficult to understand the whole dull chapter about Gibraltar and basically nothing about Greece, a country and a people who suffers the most of the judgmental character of the author.

As in another book I read from the author, it's annoying his attraction to dialogue with people who have nothing interesting to say... or are biased... it's a pity that he wastes so many pages quoting Americans, English, Australians... well, anyone who's an English native speaker. It's arrogant, like only these illuminated have something interesting to say and [almost] all the locals are just there to entertain the traveler with some picturesque sentences.

[Andrew]

I think a person approaching Theroux's travel literature for the first time is likely to be surprised at how curmudgeonly he can be at times. If you can get past that, you'll find he's also intelligent, articulate, and a keen observer of humanity. Most importantly, he possesses an almost fatal sense of curiosity. Who else would dare journey to (gulp) Albania??? But if you want to learn about life under the Hoxha regime and its apocalyptic aftermath, this is a good place to start. There's a lot more to this book than that benighted country, as he travels around the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Morocco. Along the way he makes a few very trenchant observations that are even more remarkable now, some fifteen years later. For starters, I don't know too many writers who were paying attention to European demographics and the declining birth rate in countries such as Spain and Italy, or who noted the rise of "political Islam" in Syria and Egypt. I finished the book with the general impression that this was a part of the world living off its past glories, somewhat exhausted in its efforts to cope with modernity. Despite that somewhat depressing conclusion, this book is still worth the effort - or should I say journey?

[Leftbanker · Rating 1 out of 5]

I remember first coming across this book and I just thought to myself, “Damn, a travel book about the Mediterranean. I should have written that.” I have read almost everything Theroux has written. He really is a fine writer but travel writing—for me at least—needs to be more than pretty prose. I am looking for insights into the culture. He was such a whiner in this book, even more than usual. In Spain he complained about the food. Where in the hell was he eating? From vending machines? Next he bitched about the bullfights. What is he, a 14 year old vegan schoolgirl? What the fuck did he think was going to happen at a bullfight? Next he was invited to a party in Barcelona. He got to mix with a lot of people who sounded really interesting. All he had to say was that they all smoked cigarettes. That was his brilliant observation. What a douche bag.

[Marti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally when I think "Mediterranean," the first thought that comes to mind is the Cannes Film festival. Theroux's idea was to start at Gibraltar (one of the Pillars of Hercules on the Europe side of the straight of Gibraltar, and do a circle around the entire Mediterranean and end up at the other "Pillar" in Morroco).

He wanted to stick to the shoreline because the towns located just a few miles inland, were radically different. There was -- he said -- some sort of invisible moat that kept people away from the ocean. Much of it did, in fact, resemble an industrial wasteland like exit 14 in Newark. He quotes books covering the same ground, written a hundred years ago by people like Edward Lear and James Joyce. Thus itinerary starts in Spain, continues through France, Italy, Sicily, the Adriatic, Cyprus, Albania, Greece, and the Middle East. [Although he could not do all of it because when the book was written in the 1990s, Bosnia, Algeria, and Lybia were at war]. And he does most of his travels off season to see the real people.

Though he admits he’s never been to Spain, he dismisses the entire country based on the worst parts (Costa Del Sol and off-season British resorts. However, he did like the Dali Museum and Cadaques, even if he does not spend much time there.

The heel of Italy is similarly dismissed as being “like Ireland after the potato famine.” However, he meet some old men in a very remote place that used to be Italy’s answer to Siberia where one of the authors of a book he read had been exiled. He passed on Foggia, which was too bad only because I spent one day there. I would have been interested to see what he said about it because it seems like the kind of sad sack place he was purposely seeking out.

One of the better stops was “Rimini,” the childhood home of Fellini. “Aside from Rome, it is the most ‘Fellini-esque’ place you can go.” It sounded better than Trieste (where James Joyce taught English for a while). His description, made it sound like Antwerp. From there he endures a desultory sojourn through Slovenia ("Is there anything to see here?" "NO! THERE IS NOTHING!"), he lands in war-torn Croatia.

I was most interested in Albania because I worked with someone who was from there. Theroux could not travel directly there from Croatia, and had to cross back to Italy to get a boat there. When he told Italians where he was going, they all said, "Why the hell are you going there?" My former co-worker told me that Borat was based on an actual Albanian newscaster. I had a hard time believing Albania was as bad as she described [this was in 2005], but this book proves that it was probably worse. She even witnessed a Serb chop off a boy's arm and put it in a soup. Theroux describes bus stations that had been vandalized, leaving derelict overturned vehicles with broken windows. [I am sure it is a hipster's paradise now].

All in all, this did not sound like a fun trip, but that is why it stuck me as funny. He certainly met a lot of very oddball characters. One thing I noticed is that Theroux really prefers the people of Turkey and the Middle East [in his estimation, Greece was worse than Albania in which he found some redeeming qualities eventually].

[TxB TxB · Rating 3 out of 5]

Después de viajar por medio mundo, Paul Theroux se propone darle vuelta al Mediterráneo siguiendo la costa, por lugares en los que nunca ha estado. Su intención, como siempre es la de viajar pegado a tierra, mirar, observar, entrometerse, analizar y plasmar como es un sitio en un tiempo concreto.

En el viaje, Theroux observa (siempre a través de su punto de vista, que no tiene por qué coincidir con el del lector) el concepto de "mediterraniedad", aquello que une todos los rincones pegados a la costa de este mar. Por contraposición también analiza los contrastes y conflictos que se derivan de las diferentes culturas y lugares.

El viaje está fuertemente marcado por los acontecimientos del momento (1993-1994) y lo más interesante que retrata son temas como la especulación urbanística y turística, la migración, los conflictos raciales y religiosos y las guerras que se tropieza. A través de sus ojos vemos la inmigración africana en Italia y Francia, la guerra de los Balcanes que vive sus peores días, la Albania postcomunista, la Siria de Assad, Israel bajo la Primera Intifada y el conflicto con el sur del Líbano, los extremismos religiosos en el Egipto y Argelia, la división de Chipre... Todo contado desde el punto de vista de un americano provocador, mordaz, deslenguado, políticamente incorrecto y a veces pedante y grosero.

Los tropiezos con los conflictos y las fronteras moldean el viaje, y junto con la actitud de Theroux, este se vuelve caótico. Se corta en un punto y se vuelve a reenganchar sin mucho sentido. Vaga erráticamente, da vueltas arriba y abajo. Durante una gran parte se limita a viajar en crucero y esto vuelve su periplo investigador en algo proco profundo, pues siempre se rodea de la misma gente y se mueve poco por los lugares que visita.
Todo ello se refleja en la lectura, que tiene pasajes interesantes pero otros con poca chicha, incluso tediosos. Le falta pulso, ritmo, fuerza. Tal como si el escritor tuviera un viaje poco inspirado.

Aunque había leído bastante mala crítica (por motivos que no comparto), tenía las expectativas altas, y el libro se me ha quedado flojo. No es ni de lejos de los mejores del autor. Aun así lo he disfrutado y lo recomendaría para hacerse una idea del Mediterráneo en los '90. Eso si, para los que vivimos en esta parte del mundo, les recomiendo que se vacíen de prejuicios antes de leerlo, ya que puede tocar temas que hieran a los locales y que no esperen un gran compendio de historia ni antropología: como bien dice el propio Theroux, él es solo un voyeur privilegiado que fisga y saca sus propias conclusiones.

[Liz Estrada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though a bit dated (published around 1996) and many countries have changed significantly since, including borders and political unrest, this is still one of the best travelogs I've ever read. The basic concept was for Paul Theroux to travel and see both Pillars of Hercules, one being English Gibraltar (in Spain) and the other directly across the Straight in Spanish Ceuta in Morroco, ironically. But instead of going directly across from one pillar to another, he decides to go the real long way and go up and all around the countries that border the Mediterranean Sea and finally end up pretty much where he began his journey.
Great writing and insight, historically accurate, witty, clever and sometimes just laugh out loud funny, this travel book will make you see the ancient Mediterranean in a new light and, if not too familiar with that area, a geography course to boot: from his obvious love for Italy, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey, to his disdain for Israel, Greece(??, really?), France and especially Albania, which, at the time, he called totally backwards and filled with retards! There were some inaccuracies that I noticed (one being the fact that he was in Spain in winter and mentioned seeing several corridas-bullfights- but that is impossible since there aren't bullfights at that time of year there; he must have seen them on some other trip and put it in this book, I suppose. But at least he is 100% anti bullfighting!). He was ill advised to visit Lebanon, due to Israel's bombing of that country and avoid Libya and Algeria at all costs. Most surprisingly, to me, was how "cool" Syria seemed! He does blame Brits and German tourists for ruining much of the coast of the Mediterranean, and in that we are in agreement. If you like sarcastic, cynical and down right politically incorrect writing and aren't easily offended,, this book is for you.

[Sorin Hadârcă · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great journey. I liked the way Mediterranean coastal towns in Spain, Croatia, Israel and Tunisia were described as being more alike than their inland neighbors. Plus Theroux is a great travel companion: he meets people. Not just celebrities like Mahfouz or Bowles but also taxi-drivers, farmers, street vendors. Puts you on a move...

[Bob Schnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Theroux would make a terrible travel companion (in person). He doesn't stick to any plan or schedule, and he asks a lot of personal questions. As a travel writer, however, he is head of the class. "The Pillars of Hercules" documents his travels around the coasts of the Mediterranean, for better or worse. Since most of his time there is off-season, he puts up with a lot of bad food, poor lodgings and some very inclement weather. He does, however, get to know a lot of locals and fellow travelers who share his general disdain for tourists and their impact on the communities that cater to them. He travels by foot, car, train and a variety of boats but avoids airplanes which means spending a lot of time looking at the scenery and reflecting. He also makes a point of visiting the places he is told to avoid, unless they are actively murdering foreigners (i.e., Algeria).

Theroux's observations are hilarious, sad, poignant, angry and righteous. He has no goal other than to see places he has never been before so, in that sense, he comes away pretty satisfied. And so does the reader.

[MBJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has been more years than I can remember since I last read an analog book – an actual physical book that I held in my hands, turning pages and highlighting pithy passages in yellow. My husband recently came across a dog-eared copy of The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean that his mother had passed down to him. I never met my mother-in-law, but heard much of her love of reading and great writers. So I made an exception to my digital-only rule and decided to take on this travelogue.

Paul Theroux's Mediterranean world is not the one of great cultures and civilizations, but rather one of random encounters and off-beat places. He makes no attempt to embellish what does not need embellishing. Rather, he searches beneath garbage dumps and into the soul of all he encounters. Mr. Theroux speaks to the immediacy and reality of whatever or whomever is in his path.

As a traveler, Mr. Theroux eschews the obvious. He admits he does not like museums, castles or ruins, never mind that he is writing about a vortex of great civilizations. He is disparaging of virtually any cultural experience within striking range of the average tourist. In fact, he admits that he dislikes tourists, referring to himself instead as a "traveler". A man-made structure must almost be inaccessible before he will rave about it. Then again, that is probably because it would no longer, in his view be a tourist attraction, as no tourist, as opposed to a traveler like himself, could get anywhere near it. But that is who he is, and he makes no apologies for it. He ultimately delivers for the reader, tourist or otherwise, as he gives us a unique and insightful view into a world of the Mediterranean that few outsiders have, or ever will, experience.

Mr. Theroux is anything but an apologist. He admits that his practices for note-gathering border on downright rude. He goads virtually everyone he meets into conversation, and is proud of it: "[T]hat was the nature of my traveling: request for detail, conversation as a form of ambush, the traveler as an agent of provocation." But the reader is well rewarded, as Mr. Theroux's encapsulation of these encounters is masterful.

Mr. Theroux's erratic approach to travel inures to the reader's benefit. As he states, his "... method of travel was all about improvisation." This turns out to be an understatement, as he zigzags through the Mediterranean coast, often unsure of where he will go next or what mode of transportation he will take. He admits that he pays a price for his chaotic approach, as he describes the anxiety he experiences in the process. He tells of a recurring dream in which he has a major role in a play which he has never read, even as he struts confidently about the theater before his audience. Classic performance anxiety: it brings him just a tad closer to his reader.

What is the point of writing a book such as this? For the reader, the rewards are obvious. But Mr. Theroux seems to demand a greater justification for his writing than the satisfaction of the casual reader: He writes: "Some of the best and most enjoyable travel books or studies are snap judgments. In the end, all that matters is that the facts are true, so that the historian… will be able to use your book as a source for say, the condition of Albania in 1994 (" ...stolen cars, bad roads, poor diets, lived in bunkers. . E. Hoxha graffiti still legible on some walls ..."). Historians are on firm ground with primary sources, diaries and travelers' tales". These moments of introspection add texture to Mr. Theroux's storytelling.

One particularly enjoyable aspect of Mr. Theroux's writing is that he builds his narrative around travel writers who preceded him: ex-pats like Lawrence Durrell, James Joyce and Evelyn Waugh, as well as native writers like the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz and Israeli Emile Habiby. Mr. Theroux takes us into the cafes, living rooms and other haunts of writers, past and present.

Mr. Theroux's views are often shockingly blunt. At times he sounds downright imperialist: "The Greeks had not taken very much interest in their past until Europeans became enthusiastic discoverers and diggers of their ruins. And why should they have cared? The Greeks were not Greek, but rather the illiterate descendants of Slavs and Albanian fisherman, who spoke a debased Greek dialect and had little interest in the broken columns and temples except as places to graze their sheep. The true phili-Hellenists were the English – of whom Byron was the epitome – and the French, who were passionate to link themselves with the Greek ideal". Mr. Theroux makes no pretense of being politically correct.

How does Mr. Theroux pull all this off? Quite simply, because he is a great writer who digs deep into the soil he labors. He prefers the war-torn coast of former Yugoslavia as a stomping ground of the Mediterranean to its pristine beaches. He prefers a rusty old tub of a smoke-filled ferry to the fashionable cabin and haute cuisine of a luxury liner. And his predilection for adverse working conditions is unparalleled: "I was happy when it rained or when conditions were miserable, that being the stuff of writers."

Mr. Theroux ends his Mediterranean journey in Tangiers, Morocco where he pays a visit to the ailing American writer Paul Bowles. Mr. Theroux describes Bowles as "... preoccupied, knowledgeable, worldly, remote, detached, vein, skeptical, eccentric, self-sufficient, indestructible, egomaniacal, and hospitable to praise. [Paul] was like almost every other writer I have known in my life." One may undoubtedly include Mr. Theroux in this club.

Many thanks to my mother-in-law for recommending this outstanding book to her son. I don't know that it would otherwise have come into my hands. Physically or digitally.

[Wayne Jordaan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this book because, one, I enjoy Paul Theroux 's travel writing and, two, I need a book that covers Montenegro. Well, I travelled all the way to the Balkans with the author, only to discover that travelling into Montenegro was not possible. Bummer, but the disappointment passed quickly, because my first motivation held true.

The Mediterranean shores are well-travelled and much written about, and a large part of the enjoyment of this book derives from Theroux’s anecdotes about some of these writers, both travellers and natives, past and present (circa 1993-94). Memorable in this regard is the visits to Naguib Mahfouz (whilst the latter is recovering after a near fatal attack from a fanatic) and Paul Bowles in Tangiers. It goes without saying that the TBR list has lengthened somewhat after this great read.

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this travelogue almost twenty years after it was written in 1995, I still found it not only very enjoyable but also quite educational. On the one hand, I could see how things have changed so much for the better now in countries like Croatia, Bosnia and Israel. On the other hand, countries like Syria, Greece and Egypt have slipped into bigger problems while nothing much seems to have changed in Algeria, Italy and Cyprus. This book is a classic Paul Theroux travel book. Even though he travels the touristy-Mediterranean coast, starting from Gibralter, going east all the way to the Levant and then returning along the southern coast via Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, there is enough of the Theroux-magic. The narrative shows his sharp eye, his scholarly knowledge of the region and its civilizations. Juxtaposing excerpts from the works of Yeats, Lawrence Durrell, Evelyn Waugh, James Joyce, Naguib Mahfouz and others, he brings the region alive and makes his Grand Tour a memorable one for the reader as well. Since the Mediterranean coast is home to so many European nations and peoples with recent turbulent history, Theroux delights in provoking them with polemical questions in order to draw them out and find material to record in his diaries. The result is a book with many perceptive observations on various nations and their people. The following are some of the observations that caught my interest:

While noting that Spanish towns and cities are flush with pornography, he writes, "..a country's pornography is a glimpse into its subconscious mind, revealing its inner life, its fantasy, its guilts, its passions, even its child-rearing, not to say its marriages and courtship rituals...it contains many clues and even more warnings.."

Travelling through Syria, Jordan and Israel while bypassing Lebanon, he says, "..these countries were so small! One of the marvellous atrocities of our time was the way in which the self-created problems of these countries and their arrogant way of dealing with them, made them seem larger, like an angry child standing on its tiptoes. They were expensive to operate, had vast armies, indulged in loud and ridiculously long-winded denunciation of its neighbours. All this contributed to the illusion that they were massive. But no, they were tiny, irritating, shameless and vindictive and they occupied the world's attention way out of proportion to their size or importance...." This is vintage Paul Theroux!

Nor does Greece or Albania impress him. He describes Albania through a series of adjectives and nouns - beggars, dilapidation, poverty, hunger, young underground people, stolen cars, bad roads, poor diets, Hoxha graffiti . He writes about `Hakmari - 'the culture of revenge that permeates Albanian society, cruelty to the animals in its zoo and the proliferation of pornography after liberation.

On Greece, he lets his pen have a free run. " ...the Greeks struck me as being more xenophobic than the French, more ill-tempered and irrational, in a country more backward than Croatia. They sneered at Albanians and deported them, cursed the Turks, boasted of their glorious past, manufactured nothing except tourist souvenirs, did not even clean its beaches of litter....by being accepted into the EC (now EU), Greece had become respectable..."

The Israelis give him a hard time and he repays them in kind with his powerful prose. "...they were gruff, on the defensive, rather bullying, graceless and aggrieved with a kind of sour and gloating humor. They were sullen, somewhat covert and laconic. They seemed alert, watchful, yet incurious - alert to all my movements, yet uninterested in who I am....I didn't mind their treatment of me because they treated each other no better..."

All this seems to confirm the usual criticism of Paul Theroux being a misanthrope. However, he is generous in his praise for the Turks with whom he travels for a fortnight on a cruise ship from Istanbul through the Levant and back to Istanbul. "It was relaxing to travel among people with so few prejudices, who were so ready to laugh, so ready to let themselves be mercilessly interrogated by me. They had a rare quality for people so individualistic - politeness....". He reiterates it later when he returns to his ship in Haifa, saying that it was a relief to be back among the courtesy and politeness of the Turks after the experience of Israel.

There are other observations and one-liners as well. At one place, he writes, "`After a man has made a large amount of money, he becomes a bad listener'. Anyone living in Silicon Valley and not having made much money, would attest to this!
In Syria, after seeing many statues of the then dictator Haffez-al-Assad, he writes, " any country which displays more than one statue of a living politician is a country headed for trouble.."

Readers like me, who are fans of Paul Theroux, would certainly enjoy this book because it is written in his typically uncompromising style. The trait I like best in the author is his ability to say things as he feels about them without worrying about critics. In addition, there is a wealth of material about the countries which share the Mediterranean coast, its people, their literature and culture. You would hardly notice that the book is 500 pages long.

[Cynthia Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1995 it's dated now. Made me not want to visit any of the places mentioned in the Mediterranean really paints a gloomy picture.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone planning a trip to the Mediterranean, Theroux's book helps understand the region & the people. It is a beautifully written book that celebrates both the joy of the place as a destination but also the author's own joy in travel as discovery. Starting in Gibraltar, Theroux travels east always seeking to skirt the boundaries of the sea, using only land or sea travel. It is a wonderful read.

"It may look as if I am seeking something: but I am seeking nothing." (Parece due bunco algo; per no bunco nada)." 39

"The phenomenon of seaside gimcrackery was familiar to anyone who traveled on the British coast and examined the Kingdom by the Sea...I felt intensely that the Spanish coast, especially here on the Costa del Sol, had undergone a powerful colonization-of a modern kind, but just as pernicious and permanent a violation as the classic wog-bashing sort." 49

"V.S. Pritchett speaks of "the guilt of being a tourist who is passing through and is a mere voyeur." 63-64

"The Mediterranean here was an enigma. It was corrupt, it was pure. There were horrible apartments, there were beautiful heartlands. There were nasty tycoons, there were friendly folks. The sea was polluted and blue, the sea was a green gin-fizz of stillness. Everything that had been written about the Riviera was true."139

"Corsica is famous for having its own fragrant odor-the herbaceous whiff of the maquis-lavender, honesuckle, cyclamen, myrtle, wild mint and rosemary. After he left Corsica as a young man, Napoleon never returned to the island, but exiled on Elba-which is just off the coast of Italy-he said he often savoured the aroma of Corsica in the west wind. It smells like a barrel of potpourri, it is like holding a bar of expensive soup to your nose, it is Corsica's own Vap-o-rub. The Corsican maquis is strong enough to clear your lungs and cure your cold." 145

"People talk about the Arab influence, but they overrate it. Here, sentiment as we know it, does not exist. Very violent feelings exist. This mindset still exists among the older people-revenge and superstition." 167

"Traveling to places at unfashionable times, I always think of the Graham Greene short story "Cheap in August," or Mann's Death in Venice. All I had to do was show up. I never had to make a reservation." 173

"Italians are not threatened by abstraction, and unless they are directly provoked, Italians are great live-and-let-livers. In spite of their manic stereotypes, their refusal to fuss is one of their most endearing characteristics; coping with disorder is part of Italian life, and conscious of this they often make a virtue of not getting excited." 190

"The look of tragic absurdity in a resort out of season was epitomized by Rimini, so hopeful, so ready, so empty. No town in Italy, except Rome, is so Fellini-esque. Rimini was where the great director was born and grew up; it was deeply a part of his mind, it fueled his imagination, it was the scene of a number of his movies. Rimini, an ancient town that was also a cheap seaside resort, a blend of classical ruins and carnival entertainments, was a perfect image for Italy." 248

"Venice is magic, the loveliest city in the world, because it has entirely displaced its islands with palaces and villas and churches. It is man-made, but a work of genius, sparkling in its own lagoon, floating on its dreamy reflection, with the shapeliest bridges and the last perfect skyline on earth: just domes and spires and tiled roofs. It is one color, the mellowest stone. There is no sign of land, no earth at all, only water traffic and canals. Everyone knows this, and yet no one is prepared for it, and so the enchantment is overwhelming. The fear you feel is the fear of being bewitched and helpless. Its visitors gape at it, speechless with admiration, hardly believing such splendour can shine forth from such slimy stones." 256

"There is no track quite so soundly beaten as the Mediterranean seaboard," he (Waugh) says, admitting that this will be the opposite of adventure, as it is the opposite of scholarship." 338

"Malta had the culture of South London in a landscape like Lebanon-news agents selling The Express and The Daily Telegraph, video rental agencies, pinball parlours, pizza joints, and a large Marks and Spencer. All those, as well as fortresses and churches and many shops that sold brass door-knockers. But chip-shops and cannons predominated...But the war stories ranged from the earliest Crusades to World War Two. The reason for this was obvious enough. The Maltese had only been useful during military campaigns, but in times of peace they had been ignored. This was a garrison." 357

"BY being accepted as a member of the European Community, Greece had become respectable, even viable as a sort of welfare care. Membership meant free money, handouts, every commercial boondoggle imaginable; and the sort of pork that Italians had made into prosciutto the Greeks simply gobbled up, all the while keeping their Mediterranean enemies out of the European Community." 371

"The great multiracial stewpot of the Mediterranean had been replaced by cities that were physically larger but small-minded. The ethnic differences had never been overwhelming-after all, these were simply people working out their destinies, often in the same place." 402

"No one has ever described the place where I have just arrived: this is the emotion that makes me want to travel. It is one of the greatest reasons to go anywhere." 404

"Railway stations are not timeless, but-too well-built to modernize, too large and dirty to purify; often elderly, sometimes venerable-they retain a sense of the past." 407

"They were gruff, on the defensive, rather bullying, graceless and aggrieved, with a kind of sour and gloating humour. They were sullen, somewhat covert, and laconic. They seemed assertive, watchful and yet incurious; alert to all my movements, and yet utterly uninterested in who I was. I did not take it personally, because from I what I could see they treated each other no better." 42

"Tel Aviv was both more steel and less interesting, and it was strangely introverted; its streets were lifeless, its different cultures, and its tensions, masked.
So what was it? Tel Aviv had no Mediterranean look, nor anything of the Levant in its design; its was Israeli in the sense that Israeli architecture and city planning is an American derivative. Somewhere on the east coast of Florida there must be a city that Tel Aviv resembles, a medium-sized seaside settlement of ugly high-rise building and hotels, a shopping district, a promenade by the sea, not many trees; a white population watching gray flopping waves under a blue sky." 430

"The sea in Western culture represents space, vacancy, primordial chaos," Jonathan Raban wrote to me when I asked him why every sea on earth is treated like a toilet." 488-489

"I could understand why certain foreigners might gravitate to Tangier. It was full of appealing paradoxes. The greatest was that it seemed so lawless and yet was so safe. IT was also superficially exotic but not at all distant (I could see solid, hardworking Spain from the top floor of my hotel). Tangier had an air of the sinister and the illicit, yet it was actually rather sedate. Except for the touts, the local people were tolerant towards strangers, not to say utterly indifferent. Almost everything was inexpensive, and significantly everything was available-not just the smuggles comforts of Europe but the more more rarified pleasures of this in-between place, that was neither Africa nor Europe." 564

"From 1923 until 1956 Tangier had been officially an International Zone, run by the local representatives of nine countries, including the USA. But even its absorption into Morocco at independence in 1956 did not change Tangerine attitudes nor its louche culture. In addition to the Casbah and the drugs, and the catamites that hung around the cafes, Tangier and the lovely Anglican cathedral of St. Andrews and the Grand Mosque. It seemed to me not Moroccan but Mediterranean-a place that had closer links to the other cities on the Mediterranean cities had much in common, Alexandria and Venice, Marseilles and Tunis, and even smaller places like Cagliari and Palma and Split. They're spirit mongrel and Mediterranean." 565